Query

How to remove line feeds (lf) and character return (cr) from a text field in SQL Server?

Standard

I was doing some data cleaning the other day, I ran into the issue of text fields having line feeds (lf) and character returns (cr) — this creates a lot of issues when you do data import/export. I had run into this problem sometime before as well and didn’t remember what I did back then so I am putting the solution here so it can be referenced later if need be.

To solve this, you need to remove LF, CR and/or combination of both. here’s the T-SQL syntax for SQL Server to do so:

SELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(@YourFieldName, CHAR(10), ' '), CHAR(13), ' ')

if you’re using some other database system then you need to figure out how to identify CR and LF’s — in SQL Server, the Char() function helps do that and there should be something similar for the database system that you’re using.

Time Intelligence in MDX: last N days

Standard

it’s a common requirement to create a report that shows last N days of a business metric – so I thought I’ll post a template here for SQL server analysis server’s MDX query:

[code language=”SQL”]

WITH
MEMBER [Measures].[Sales_last_15_days] AS
Sum
(
{
[Calendar].[Date YYYYMMDD].CurrentMember.Lag(14)
:
[Calendar].[Date YYYYMMDD].CurrentMember
}
,[Measures].[Sales]
)

MEMBER [Measures].[CurrDate] as
"[Calendar].[Date YYYYMMDD].[" + Cstr(Year(Now())*10000+month(now())*100+day(now())) +"]"

SELECT
{
[Measures].[Sales_last_15_days]
} ON COLUMNS
FROM
[CubeName]
WHERE
STRTOMEMBER([Measures].[CurrDate])

[/code]

Here are things that you’ll need to adjust to make it work for your scenario:

1. Date Dimension Attribute & it’s format. The example shows yyyymmdd but you could have different format of the date.

2. Measure name. Instead of [Measures].[Sales] you’ll have to replace it with your business metric. Also, make sure you are using the right aggregate function, in the example above I have used SUM but you’ll have to change this based on your requirement.

3. Create a parameter and use it in index for the Lag function.

4. change [cubename] to your cube name.

I hope this gives you a good starting point to create last N days for your business metric.